Sugar Beer Doughnut Holes

It’s been my summer backyard party staple. It’s what I’ve been making for months when I get the invite to “come over, we’re making food, just bring whatever.” It’s all the things I look for in bring-to-a-party food. It transports well, it sits at room temperature for a long time without concern, and it’s impressive. I know that last part makes me a bit of an over-foodie asshole, but I can’t change now.

If you’ve never made doughnuts, it’s really pretty simple, and there is only one major concern: temperature. Twice, you have to concern yourself with temperate in order for these to turn out perfect, but other than that, it’s pretty simple. First is yeast temperate. For rapid rise yeast, the liquid (in this case beer) needs to be between 120F and 130F, too low and it won’t get a good rise, too high and you’ll kill the yeast. If you aren’t sure what temperate to use, always (always) use the temperate listed on the package of yeast, not the temperate listed in the recipe. Always.

Second, you’ll have to worry about the deep fry oil. I own a small deep fryer, because of course I own a deep fryer, and it maintains the temperate all on it’s own. But before I did, I just used the Dutch oven filled with a few inches of canola oil. Clip a deep fry thermometer onto the side, make sure the tip doesn’t touch the bottom (not even for a second, just to see how it feels), and adjust the oil temperate to keep it between 350 and 375.

Those are the big battles, and really, it’s not that bad. And at the end of it all, you get to show up with 36 homemade doughnut holes, and that’s worth all that temperate worry. You deserve a beer.

5 thoughts on “Sugar Beer Doughnut Holes”

I love your recipes and ideas, and how you often teach about beer… but… your ads… Three video ads on every page? They slow down the loading of the website so much it’s a pain to come read about your delicious food.

Gotta pay the bills somehow, Sarah. The ads are the price I have to pay for my ability to give these recipes away for free. I’m sorry they are such a pain, I get it. But I do appreciate that because of them, I don’t have to charge any of my readers a thing. I won’t do pop-ups, or walls, or anything that blocks the content, even though they would pay me much more because I don’t want them to be too much of a pain. Hope you can still enjoy!